New Scientist


Fire amoeba breaks heat tolerance record for complex life

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 15:00:00 +0000

An amoeba living in a Californian hot spring is thriving above 60°C, a threshold previously thought deadly to complex life


How ancient superbugs could help us fight antibiotic resistance

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 15:00:00 +0000

As the world warms, antibiotic-resistant bacteria are escaping from frozen sediments. But with new monitoring tools, we can identify problem genes and develop treatments before our pathogens acquire them


Should we use GLP-1 drugs to treat obesity in children?

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Children as young as 8 in the US are being prescribed off-label GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, sparking debate about the potential long-term health effects


Worried about an AI apocalypse? Here’s how to think about the risk of doom

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 05:00:00 +0000

Commentators say the probability of machines wiping us out ranges from 0 to over 95 per cent. Columnist Jacob Aron explains why you shouldn't trust any of those numbers


Dramatic gannet dive wins Bird Photographer of the Year competition

Mon, 21 Sep 2026 23:01:00 +0000

Henley Spiers took the top award in the annual contest, with shots of guillemots, penguins and a protective tawny frogmouth also in the running for the prize


Swimmer made of quantum light breaks Newton’s third law

Mon, 21 Sep 2026 16:00:00 +0000

According to Newton’s third law, all actions are paired with reciprocal reactions. But breaking this principle allowed an artificial swimmer to move upstream in a quantum stream of light


The collapse of the AMOC would be catastrophic. How will we know when it’s coming?

Mon, 21 Sep 2026 15:00:00 +0000

Europe faces incredibly harsh winters and unrelenting droughts if the vital AMOC ocean current fails – but when disaster will strike and how bad it will be remains uncertain. Now there is an ambitious plan to give us a warning


SpaceX’s Starship will orbit Earth for first time during next flight

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 14:00:00 +0000

Starship's next test flight will be its first orbital mission. The craft will also release working Starlink V3 satellites for the first time, making the flight the first commercially useful Starship mission


Physicists are scrambling to make sense of possible dark matter signal

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Following the possible recent detection of a dark matter particle, researchers have already come up with a veritable cornucopia of possible models for what sort of particle it might have been


Fishapod fossil shows early elbows came in a variety of forms

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000

The fish that preceded the first four-legged land animals came in a wider variety of forms than we had thought, and fossils show that one had an elbow joint that moved in an oddly restrictive way